Ascension

She sat up and pushed at him. “I’m serious, Kerrick. Something’s wrong. I can feel it. I sense it. We’re in trouble.”

He drew back and scowled. “What kind of trouble?”

“I think death vampires are on the way.” She shook her head. “A lot of death vampires.”

Kerrick shook his head. “Shit.” He started to pace.

Alison leaped from the couch, pulled up her jeans, zipped, then buttoned. She glanced out the family room slider, which faced east. The mountains opposite were trimmed in a faint light. Dawn would not be far behind.

He looked at her. “So you’re sure about this.” He crossed to the other couch, grabbed his weapons harness then slid it on. In a blur of motion he drew his hair back and secured it in the leather clasp.

She nodded. “We need to get out of here. Now. But Kerrick, this isn’t fair to you.”

“What?” He looked like she’d slapped him.

“Why should you be put in danger because of my ascension?”

He actually laughed. “Oh, please. This is my job. Shit, I can’t believe you said that.” He drew his phone from his pocket. “Now I need to ask again, are you absolutely sure? Because what I’m about to do is illegal.”

Alison nodded. “I keep seeing the word regiment, and I feel the pressure of an army coming—not just one man or even two or three.”

He dipped his chin. “That’s good enough for me.” He thumbed his phone then a moment later said, “Central, I’m calling an emergency lift … repeat, an emergency lift. Have Thorne retrieve two at this signal and make it fast. We will be on the move.” He thumbed his phone again and slid it into the pocket of his kilt. He cursed. He was so fucking limited in the action he could take. Even if he’d had the capacity to fold Alison to another location, chances were good Greaves could track their movements and send death vampires right on their tail. When Thorne performed the fold, he had the power to block a trace.

But what he really didn’t understand was how Greaves had found them in the first place. The complexity of the mist Kerrick had created this time in order to disguise Alison’s house should have prevented detection, even from Greaves, which of course meant the Commander had increased his technological capability. So … shit.

“Kerrick. The regiment is here. Right now. Outside.”

He blurred to her side and took her hands in his. “We have no time. You said you had a Hummer. You must fold us there now—only please tell me your Hummer is good to go.”

She nodded.

Kerrick squeezed her fingers. “Just relax.”

Relax? Really? She smiled but she took his words to heart, drew in a long deep breath, and concentrated. She felt the vibration.

Just as she appeared by the vehicle with Kerrick in front of her and his hands still holding hers, an enormous blast sounded on the other side of the house. The walls shook. The garage sat on the opposite side of the house, separated by a courtyard and a wing of bedrooms, which she suspected was exactly what had just saved them.

“So Darian’s army just blew up the rest of my house.”

Kerrick nodded then thrust a hand toward the vehicle. “Get in.”

She mentally hit the lights, both for the garage and the headlights for the Hummer.

“Maybe I should fold us somewhere else?”

“Too late. Greaves’s army has a fix on you, with death vamps ready to trace no matter where we go, and believe me, if they’ve sent a regiment to your home, they’d be happy to send another regiment in pursuit. They’d engage me in such a way that I’d be forced to leave you unguarded. Then you’d be dead. Right now only the call to Thorne will get us out of this.”

“Lead on,” she cried. She vaulted around to the passenger’s side then hopped in. She started to tell him she had forgotten the keys but there was nothing holding her back. She pointed to the ignition and started the vehicle. She could use any of her powers right now, in the presence of this warrior, and it wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t be freaked and he wouldn’t judge her. Maybe he wouldn’t even get hurt.

She turned toward the garage door and began forming the thought to open it. Instead his words zipped through her mind: No time, duck down. He aimed his hand at the door, fired away, shattered the back window of the Hummer, and sent the garage door flying off its hinges.

The Second Earth vampire had power!

A heartbeat later he backed out of the garage at the devil’s own pace.

He turned, skidded, and shifted into drive.

He hit the accelerator.

The tires squealed.

He didn’t bother with the driveway. He drove straight through the wire fence and the hilly open desert away from the front of the house. The Hummer’s lights bounced over the terrain like a lantern swinging wildly.

As her eyes adjusted, she looked around. Greaves’s army attacked, heading toward her house on the ground and in black combat gear or flying down out of the sky. Some of the soldiers looked normal, but the rest were death vampires bearing the hallmark beauty of their kind as well as the pale, almost bluish tint to the skin. Those soldiers in flight wore the same gear Kerrick did right now: kilts, gladiator sandals, and weapons harnesses. However, the weapon of choice involved bullets rather than blades.

“Oh, God.”

One good spray from an assault rifle and game over.

“Get down,” Kerrick’s deep voice thumped inside the Hummer.

She dropped low in her seat though she felt compelled to keep an eye on what was happening.

A death vamp flew close then lifted his rifle.

Without thinking she raised her hand, blew out the front windshield, and knocked the warrior down. The resulting bounce of tires caused her stomach to lurch. Oh, God, they’d run him over.

Kerrick cried out, “Keep doing what you’re doing. Right now you’re our best weapon. Goddammit.” He jerked the heavy vehicle to the right, bounced down into a wash, then climbed up the other side all in the space of seconds. The maneuver left behind a platoon of foot soldiers.

More death vamps, in flight, headed toward the Hummer.

With one hand on the steering wheel, Kerrick held out his right hand and a pistol appeared. A death vamp landed on the hood. Kerrick fired, chest center, and blew the vamp backward. Another crunch under the wheels. Alison’s stomach heaved north.

Her peripheral vision caught movement. A death vamp flew at window level. He slowly raised a pistol. Her eyes widened. Once more she sent a blast, which in turn sent the death vamp spiraling out of control and piled up at the base of a saguaro.

“Goddammit, Central. Where’s Thorne?”

He fired his pistol until the trigger clicked on empty. He folded another weapon into his hand and pulled the trigger, the sound deafening inside the Hummer. Death vamps fell right and left and still more came. He fired as he drove through the desert, up and down gullies, busting apart creosote, sideswiping tall spindly ocotillo, and crunching fat barrel cacti.

Alison kept aiming her palm at anything that drew close. Her heart had ramped up, doubled its beats. She had never been so frightened in her life.

A thumping sounded on the roof. Alison sent a blast up. The top of the Hummer lifted, separated, then fell off the back of the vehicle. From her side mirror she saw a winged death vamp slide down the side of the wash then struggle to gain his feet.

“Shit,” Kerrick cried out. “Thorne, where are you?”

Alison turned around and cried out. In front of her at least twenty death vamps rained down from the sky directly in the Hummer’s path.

Do your best, Alison, or God help us, he sent.

She blasted away with her hand in a wide arc in front of her, but she knew her power had weakened. She’d never thrown so many hand-blasts in her life. Not all the warriors fell. Her left shoulder jerked backward.

She felt a strange curdling in the pit of her stomach. Another winged death vamp landed on the hood of the Hummer. Kerrick pulled the trigger, but only a series of clicks followed.

The pretty-boy aimed his pistol directly at her, a feral look in his eyes, a smile pulled back over thick, heavy fangs. Alison lifted her hand, but the blast that followed had little effect. She was finished.

Time slowed.

So this was how she was going to die?

She laughed. So much for ascending to Second Earth. She hadn’t even survived a handful of hours.

She closed her eyes and waited.

A brilliant light flashed in front of her eyelids.

The next thing she knew, she stood before a tall handsome man with long light brown hair. He was almost as tall as Kerrick and just as muscled. His hazel eyes were badly red-rimmed like he hadn’t slept in a year.

He scowled at her. “You’re hit.”

She didn’t know what he meant exactly. No one had hit her, but her mind felt as if it was moving in circles at the bottom of a drain. She couldn’t see very well. She glanced around. She had landed in some sort of very dark rec room that housed a bunch of really ugly couches. A pool table was on its back, all four legs up in the air, two of them bent at a weird angle. On the other side of the room was a long bar fronted by several tall stools. An assortment of gleaming hard-liquor bottles in a variety of shapes and sizes decorated a row of cabinets.

She weaved on her feet. Pain pierced her shoulder suddenly, like someone had just taken a chain saw to the joint. She glanced down. Blood soaked her shirt and sweater. She pulled the neck of the T-shirt away and sure enough, blood pumped sluggishly from a bullet wound.

Well, what do you know? She’d gotten hit.

Oh. That’s what the guy with the red-rimmed eyes had meant.

At least she wasn’t dead.

At least, she didn’t think she was dead.

Her knees gave way. She had a vague impression of someone catching her as everything went black.

Let the healer come,

For when the wounds are well-tended

A land is saved.

—Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth

Chapter 12

Kerrick stood near the pool table, Alison in his arms. Christ, they’d barely made it out alive.